The Salaryman's Wife (33 page)

“When you came in, he must have given up. He probably was just a lecher who followed you from the station,” Richard told me.

“But I only noticed him on our street. It was almost like he was here first, waiting for me to arrive.”

“The guy was probably sent by Keiko,” Mariko said grimly. “Earlier this evening I called Esmerelda at the bar. She said a punk wearing a motorcycle helmet showed up asking for payment.”

So the attack was Keiko’s doing and had nothing to do with Joe Roncolotta or Kenji Yamamoto. I should have told the police…or would that have made things worse? I felt clammy and realized that I was sweating into the Léger. Karen would kill me if I stained it. I shooed Richard and Mariko back to their room, then undressed and gently sponged the arm holes with a mixture of water and baby shampoo.

The silk felt good under my fingers; it really was a nice dress. And what my mother always told me about quality fabrics had proven true. The material was implausibly unwrinkled, even after my battles with the piranhas of the Tokyo American Club and the phantoms of the East Tokyo streets.

I hit the alarm clock’s
SNOOZE
button twice before struggling into a sitting position at six-thirty on Saturday. I couldn’t figure out why I was awake. Through blurred eyes, I saw the evening dress on its hanger and the memory of my wild night came back.

I turned on all possible sources of heat—my kerosene heater, the water tank, broiler, and range—before showering fast and sliding into jeans and Hugh’s white shirt, which had been washed and ironed by someone. Richard didn’t usually do my laundry. I chuckled a little as I made coffee and dialed California.

My father picked up the phone on the second ring.

“It’s Rei on the telephone, Catherine! She’s all right.” Then he started in on me. “Rei-chan, there’s a crazy rumor about your name being on Japanese television! Eric Hanada saw something on cable, and
his granddaughter says she’s going to mail a magazine called
Friday
with you on the cover.”

“Baby, it’s time for you to come home.” My mother had gotten on another extension. “Cash in that ticket we sent you last year or just buy a new one—”

“Stop, will you?” I snapped before realizing how I was falling into my old, ungracious patterns. I took a deep breath and started again. “Sorry, I can’t fly out. The police are watching for me at Narita Airport.”

The story took half an hour to tell. My mother gasped at the story of Setsuko’s murder, but seemed equally curious about matters relating to Hugh.

“Married or divorced?” she asked casually.

“Neither. Mom, that’s not important”

“Sendai? Hmm,” my father said.

I felt it my duty to confess he was on indefinite leave. There was an uncomfortable lull.

“You see, everything hinges on finding Setsuko’s killer,” I said, trying to get back on track. “If we can prove there were other people in Setsuko’s background, these awful questions and the possibility of the indictment will be over.”

“Something like ninety-nine percent of the people who stand trial in Japan are convicted. Did you know that?” My father demanded.

“Yes, Dad.” As if I hadn’t heard it a dozen times already.

“Hugh’s an attorney, not a killer,” my mother cut in. Ordinarily, that kind of generalization would have drawn an argument from me, but I kept my mouth shut.

There was a silence on my father’s side. I pictured
him sitting on the edge of his walnut desk with the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear, staring through the study’s glass doors at the rock garden my mother and I built together. He could ponder the swirls of gravel and small, moss-covered boulders for hours. I preferred the garden from outside, with the fresh air around me and the birds in the trees. I remembered how I’d spent a long-ago afternoon there, deciding whether I would risk coming to Japan without a job. The garden had told me yes.

“Dad, are you looking at the garden?” I asked him.

“Yes.” He sounded faintly surprised.

“It’s special because the stones and plants all followed a plan. There’s a pattern here, too, in what happened to Setsuko. And I’ve got it drawn in my mind, all but the last few pieces.”

“What do you need from us, Rei? Should we come?” my mother pressed.

“You can help me best from where you are.” But as I started to talk about calling directory assistance in Boston and Texas, it was my father who asked for the Evans brothers’ first names. My father, my champion.

After I hung up, Richard and Mariko drifted in, talking about making pancakes. From the way Richard looked at Hugh’s shirt on me, I could tell he had planned on wearing it. Mariko was wearing a pair of his long johns with her own Ranma sweatshirt. Standing at the stove with a spatula, she looked very much like she belonged.

The pancakes she produced were perfectly golden, fluffy, and all about the size of a 500 yen coin.

“Mariko’s such a perfectionist,” Richard said, watching her arrange a square butter pat on each cake. I thought of getting some maple syrup but she had something else in mind: strawberry jam.

“You probably wonder why I’m staying with Richard again,” Mariko said, watching me cut into a diminutive pancake.

“It’s better for you here than at the Marimba, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Even though this neighborhood is horrible.” She shot Richard a sidelong glance. “We’re friends again. I like him, you know? At first it was just his looks. Now I know his heart, and he is the only man who wants more than my body.”

“Are you planning to continue living together?” I asked cautiously.

“Well, I’m actually moving out of here.” Richard ran his fingers through his hair so it stood straight up. “Simone has a lead on a place in Shibuya and figures we could afford it together.”

“Shibuya’s pretty ritzy,” I said, envy running through me along with the awful feeling I wouldn’t be his best friend anymore.

“It’s one bedroom, but I said I’d take the living room.” Richard shrugged. “It’s similar to the way we live here, but it will be a thousand times neater with me out front.”

“How stupid to leave such a cheap apartment in Tokyo!” Mariko, who had previously mocked our neighborhood, exclaimed.

“I’ll be earning more money now that I’m leaving Nichiyu!”

“You have a new job?” I was incredulous. He really had locked me out of his life.

“Hugh and I were shooting the breeze at Marimba, and he told me about some French businessman who wants to back a new language school. It’s going to be an expensive place oriented to people going on European tours, and I’ll do English and Simone will teach French. She was getting sick of selling bracelets in Ueno Park anyway.”

“So where am I going to live?” Mariko demanded.

“Doesn’t your bank have a dormitory?” Richard sounded nervous.

“That’s for full-time workers. I’m trying to get them to give me more hours, but…” Mariko trailed off, looking like she was going to cry.

“As boring as you find this neighborhood, there’s no reason you can’t stay with us a while longer. Richard, you aren’t quitting Nichiyu right away?” I asked.

“Nope. We’ve got to save up for the key money and realtor fees, and I don’t want to send old Katoh off the deep end just yet.”

“As I told you before, Mariko, you’re welcome to sleep in my room,” I offered.

“But Mariko and I are living in harmony.” Richard squeezed her hand. “We lie head-to-toe on our futons so no one gets tempted, and she tells me Japanese ghost stories!”

Mariko showed her dimples, and I had an uneasy feeling her ardor had not completely cooled.

“I’ll be moving out,” I said, my mind made up. “I have to go to Shiroyama but when I get back, Hugh will probably have returned to his apartment to convalesce. I want to be there.”

“Well, it is centrally heated. I can’t blame you,” Richard said. “Will you have us over for dinner in the fabulous white kitchen?”

“As long as you don’t mind facing the
paparazzi
outside the building.”

“No! Really?” Richard had loved giving quotes to the tabloid reporters, and was miffed when all they had wanted were snapshots of me.

The phone rang as we were finishing breakfast.

“I can hardly understand the way these people speak in Boston, but I think I’ve located one of the men you’re looking for,” my father.

“Which son?”

“Roderick Evans. He seemed excited, actually, to hear that my daughter in Tokyo needed to contact him on a matter regarding his father.”

“He doesn’t know what’s coming.” I worried aloud. “To find out one’s father had a second family in Japan…how can I tell him?”

“You’ll be fine. Rei,” my father said. “Trust yourself.”

Trust yourself
. I brushed my teeth and walked around straightening things as I willed myself to call Roderick Evans. I wrote out a list of questions. I did fifty sit-ups and drank three glasses of water. Finally, I dialed Boston.

“Mr. Roderick Evans? This is Rei Shimura calling from Japan…”

“My late father’s favorite place in the world! I tell you, I’m sorry he isn’t here to talk to somebody living there. Call me Rod, will you?” Evans’s voice was warm and free of suspicion. My father must have done some job on him.

“I’m calling because I saw a copy of his obituary. It made its way over to the Navy community, some old chiefs saw it…”

“The Veterans’ Association, right? I mailed them the notice just as my father would have wanted. So, do you want information on his retirement years for the military newspaper or something?”

“Well, I’d love to hear about what happened.” I tried to stay evasive.

“He came back home and got married to Mom—the former Peg Miller, as the obit said—and he bought his own garage, had a real good business with that.”

A garage didn’t sound like big money to me. “Did he spend any time in Texas?”

“Nope. Well, he had a buddy who moved there. I think he visited once, but maybe that was for a mechanics’ convention. Why?”

“Well, there are some papers here…I work in the historic preservation field and have come across some letters without a proper signature. I have reason to believe they might be from your father.”

“We have a fax at the garage. Just send it and I’ll give you an answer Monday morning.”

“The fact is it’s rather sensitive. I was actually hoping you could send me his handwriting sample.”

“I don’t know about that.” His voice became more guarded. “What are you really looking for?”

“I’m trying to determine whether your father was connected to a Japanese woman.” I paused. “She was half-American, actually. Her name was Setsuko Ozawa Nakamura.”

“So what?”

“Well, she had no father listed on her birth certificate.” I held my breath, hoping he’d stay on the line.

There was a brief silence, and then Rod cleared his throat. “Are you trying to say my dad was her father? Of all the…I should just hang up.” He didn’t.

“I don’t know for sure, but someone at the Veterans’ Association thought maybe it could be him. I’m really sorry.” I gulped.

“I always wondered,” Rod said. “I always wondered why he looked at Oriental women on the street, right in front of my mom like she wasn’t even there.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

There was another pause, and then Rod gave me a fax number. “You send me that letter. I’ll go in tonight to wait for it.”

“You will?”

“But if there are people out there making claims to his estate, tell them to forget about it. He’s got nothing, he recognizes nobody else in his will other than me and Marshall—”

“Nobody’s trying to sue anyone,” I said. “It might be the case that Setsuko was blackmailing him. Knowing what I do about her, that wouldn’t be surprising at all. Your father could be a victim of sorts—”

“Don’t patronize me, okay? Send the goddamn letter, and I’ll tell you what I think.”

I buried my face in my hands after it was over. What a screw-up I’d made of things. Roderick Evans had been so injured, so naked in his outrage. He couldn’t have had enough cunning to fly to Japan and kill Setsuko. I’d hit another roadblock.

I picked up the phone again and dialed the St. Luke’s number I now knew by heart.

“Room four-twenty-three, please,” I said.

“That room is unoccupied,” the operator told me.

“Did Mr. Glendinning change rooms again? This is Rei Shimura calling.”

“Oh, the cousin of Shimura-
sensei
! Don’t you know Mr. Glendinning is not here anymore? He left against doctor’s advice with a friend.”

“A friend?” I panicked, thinking how dangerous Yamamoto had become.

“Yes. He left with a woman in the early morning hours,” the receptionist confided. “The charge nurse was furious about it! This lady must have helped him down the stairway and out the front. By then it was too late to do anything.”

“Was the woman foreign or Japanese?”

“
Gaijin
. Shimura-
sensei
noticed her often during visiting hours. A blond woman in a long black and white gown and a fur coat.”

“Thank you very much,” I said, starting to hang up.

“Anytime, Shimura-san, and your cousin wants to know if you’ll be stopping in today? He’s working the afternoon shift and wants to see you.”

“Tell him I’ll try to come in.” I would have to
make a major apology for my last outburst if I wanted to remain part of the Shimura family.

“Since the photographers aren’t outside anymore, visiting will be a lot more convenient for you!” the receptionist chirped, and even I had to laugh.

I kept my eyes out for stalkers on the way to Family Mart. When I made it inside, I made a silent, thankful prayer.

“A great picture today.” Mr. Waka held up the
Yomiuri Shimbun
with the page folded back to show a photograph of me being handed into the taxi by Joe the previous evening.

“
Rei no ka rei sa
,” Mr. Waka said. It was another play on the many meanings of my name—this time, it meant something like
Rei’s beauty
.

“No doubt an attempt at satire. What does the story say?” I scrabbled for change in my pocket to photocopy the envelope and letter.

“Well, it says you are very much a girl of adventure. You had an accident at the train station yesterday? Please be more careful. And there’s plenty of talk about your escort, Mr. Joe Roncolotta, the elderly Tokyo businessman. The journalist believes he bought the dress you were wearing because a teacher surely couldn’t afford it. There is mention of Mr. Roncolotta’s deceased Japanese wife and the various ladies he has known since that time—he is sixty-two years old! Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea!”

“Nothing’s going on,” I soothed, but he didn’t look happier.

“What about poor Mr. Glendinning waiting in the hospital room alone? Popular opinion has turned in his favor. People are feeling sorry for him now that you are going out with many men.”

“He’s not in the hospital anymore. He left with another woman. You’ll read about it if tomorrow is another slow news day.” I looked at the page in my hands, trying to determine if it was clear enough to fax through to America, Then my eyes lit on the moldy envelope.

“Do you want me to read the article to you?” Mr. Waka prodded. “Or the latest survey on Mr. Glendinning’s image?”